Innocence Project at The University of Mississippi

MIP Staff

	W. Tucker Carrington Director carringw@olemiss.edu
Tucker opened the doors of MIP as Executive Director in August 2007. Before he came to Mississippi, he served as visiting professor at Georgetown University Law Center and supervising attorney at Public Defender Services in Washington, D.C.

Valena Beety
Staff Attorney
vbeety@olemiss.edu

Ms. Beety joined the Mississippi Innocence Project in 2009, after serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C. She graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, then clerked Chief Judge James G. Carr, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, and for the Honorable Martha Craig Daughtrey, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Valena holds a strong and continuing interest in the intersection between gender and criminal justice, particularly the ongoing and historically rooted problems of economic, social, and racial bias.

While in law school, she worked at the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, the Project to Combat Bias Violence at the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she focused on sexual violence in the Rwandan genocide. Valena was also a member of the University of Chicago Law Review, and a student advocate in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Clinic.

	Will McIntosh Staff Attorney will@mississippiinnocence.org
Mr. McIntosh is a graduate of the University of Georgia and a 2008 graduate of the University of Mississippi School of Law. He began his work with MIP as a staff attorney in August 2008. Mr. McIntosh's overall responsibilities include investigating and litigating cases, assisting clinic students and volunteers, and assisting the Director in identifying potentially meritorious innocence claims.

Carol C. Mockbee
Assistant to the Director
carol@mississippiinnocence.org

Ms. Mockbee joined MIP in June 2009 and administrates all of the Project's extra-litigation programs. Ms Mockbee is also in charge with the day-to-day administration of the Project's office. Ms Mockbee is also the producer of
Thacker Mountain Radio, Oxford's original music and literature radio show.

She is a graduate of Auburn University and was a Jesse DuPont Fellow at the Rural Studio in Newbern, Alabama, where she completed the project,
"Subrosa Pantheon."

	Nina Rifkind
Ms. Rifkind is of counsel to MIP. She most recently worked for Hickman Goza & Spragins in Oxford and Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett in Los Angeles. Her area of expertise is federal habeas post-conviction law, and she has participated in several death penalty appeals in Missouri and Mississippi. Nina received her undergraduate degree from Yale and her law degree from NYU.

Board of Directors
Innocence Clinic
Pro Bono Counsel